PART III:
FOUR PLAYS

Volume XII - The Divinity of the Human Soul

Part I: The Vision of God and Man and other Lectures

THE MYSTERY OF TELEPATHY

TO SOME, telepathy is a mysterious phenomenon, but to
those who understand it, it is as easy and natural as ordinary
conversation in our everyday life. Everyone can understand
that thoughts have existence, and many scientists nowadays
perceive that thoughts are made of vibrations, which mystics
and sages have understood throughout the ages.

As the physical body is made up of physical atoms, so
our mind is composed of vibrations; every activity of the
mind is thought. Now thoughts are of two kinds. First there
is imagination. This is an activity of the mind as well
as thought, but in imagination the activity is not controlled
by the will. When a person is resting in a chair without
thinking about anything in particular, the mind has a habit
of wandering. In this respect it is like a wild or untamed
horse that runs off into the jungle at will. It goes off
without knowing whither or why, for it is its habit just
to wander about. So the imagination is not specially directed
and wanders about on various lines just as it pleases, yet
at the same time following the lines to which the mind is
accustomed. This is why a musician's imagination naturally
dwells on music and on musical things, and an artist's imagination
on artistic things. A thief's imagination will dwell on
how to rob and that of a writer on what he has been writing
about. All this is imagination; that is, it is not controlled
by the will.

This is what takes place in the average mind. From morning
till evening the will is actively working on the lines to
which the mind has become accustomed, the lines which the
mind has already formed. For example, consider a person
who is always thinking of construction, of how to construct
a factory or how to build up a certain type of business.
During this time he has been forming lines in this area
of his mind or mental being. These lines are open to the
imagination, and so the mind goes on working along the same
lines which his thought has previously been following, even
when he is not thinking specially of those subjects. He
still follows the same line he has been thinking on.

The lines, which the will has made in the mind, are the
directions along which the imagination unconsciously travels.
As it is said, 'Where your treasure is, there will your
heart be also.'

Secondly there is thought proper, when the power of the
will is directing the activity of the mind. This explains
the words 'thoughtful' and 'thoughtless'. The thoughtful
person is he whose will directs his mind, whether he is
doing something or speaking or thinking. It is he whom people
will call a thinker. But the one who does not control his
action, speech, and thoughts by will is thoughtless; his
thought is really imagination, his speech does not make
sense, his actions become thoughtless and inconsiderate.
In brief, these three things – thought, speech, and action
– reveal the character of the thought. If they are controlled
by the will they show thoughtfulness, but if they are not
so controlled the person is called thoughtless.

Now we have been given two main faculties of perception:
the senses of touch, smell, and taste, which form the lower
senses, and the hearing and seeing faculties called Sami
and Basir in Sufi terms, which are the higher or principal
senses. These two groups both work with the physical body,
the latter with the ears and eyes, but in reality they work
in the mind; it is the mind which listens and sees. The
mind is listening when it is aware of things without people
telling us. We notice when a person is displeased. A person
may say, 'Thank you', and yet the mind perceives that he
is not really thankful but is using these words as a formality,
or even out of sarcasm. So it is the mind which discriminates;
the ears of the mind listen. The more developed the mind
is, the more it can listen even without the help of the
ears; it listens to another person's thought without the
utterance of a sound. The mind can see the form of the thoughts
and discriminate between them, and this is what a seer does;
however, it is easier for the mind to perceive by hearing
than by seeing.

This brings us to the subject of concentration. A person
who is sitting with closed eyes is not necessarily concentrating;
he may just be resting or he may be asleep. If he is dreaming,
that is not concentration either. Concentration is an act
of the will during which the mind actually sees, during
which the seeing faculty of the mind acts as well as the
hearing faculty. To concentrate well one should think of
a hot pan in which the oil is always fluid, so that things
cook quickly in it. Do not let that pan cool through extraneous
occupations. If one's mind is strongly concentrated on one
thing, whatever else comes in the way will be done as well.

Whereas our physical being uses five senses to perceive
things, our mental being uses only two: seeing and hearing.
When we visualize we see things with the help of the mind.
It is not everyone who can visualize. When there is no power
to visualize it is because things seen that way seem so
vague and insubstantial compared with the things we see
in the external world. It is difficult for us to think of
such visualized things as real. Everything that is before
our eyes and ears we consider to be real, whereas whatever
comes before the mind's eye we regard as imagination, as
something passing, as a dream. It is the same mind that
perceives and hears the things of everyday life, yet what
it perceives in the other way we think of as being just
imagination, although it is actually these things which
are the true realities.

To a mystic the reality of the external world is not
more real than the reality on the mental plane, for just
as the first is subject to change so all things on the mental
plane are subject to change too.

Two conditions must be fulfilled before external vibrations
can become audible. You hear me speak because there is no
wall between you and myself. A wall prevents communication.
Then when a person is speaking out in the open with the
same pitch of voice as I use at this moment, you cannot
hear his voice as well as mine, for the house we are in
gives the sound a place to echo in and become clearly audible.
Thus these are the conditions: first a current must be established,
a channel or opening through which the sound or the words
can reach another person; and secondly the sound must not
be able to scatter in all directions, but it must be directed
and concentrated towards the other, so that it can reach
the inner or mental process which we call thought.

If we wish to retain thought, or transmit thought, we
must learn the process of 'throwing the ball' to hit a certain
goal. We must direct our aim right, and we must put enough
force in it to enable it to reach the goal. It is the force
of the will that sends the thought to reach another person,
and the aiming, whereby one focuses one's mental eye upon
the other in telepathy, is concentration. In brief, two
things are necessary for telepathy: strength of will and
power of concentration.

There used to be a sage living in Hyderabad, and people
went to him for help. But he never came out to see them
unless he was in a mood to do so. So after a while people
came to think of him as so disagreeable that they would
not seek an interview unless they had great confidence in
his power.

One day a man came and said, 'My case is coming before
the court, but I have no money, and so if I lose the case
it will go hard with my children.' Thereupon the sage wrote
on a piece of paper the words, 'I see nothing in this case;
I will dismiss it', and he told the man to go home and not
trouble himself further about the matter. In due time the
man went to court, and he answered all the questions put
to him. The judge also asked various questions of the barrister
on the opposite side, and finally he wrote down his opinion,
using the exact words, which the sage had written down.
What had the sage done? He had engraved on the mind of this
judge the selfsame words that he had used.

What a wealth of power is latent in man, and yet his
lack of confidence bars him from it! Sometimes he is afraid
to offend his religious belief, sometimes he is afraid of
unknown dangers, sometimes he may think he is offending
friends, enemies, people in high places. But we are in this
world not just to roam about and eat and drink and sleep
and amuse ourselves, without ever getting to know and understand
this world around us, to understand ourselves, to understand
life and the powers latent in us, the inspiration and unused
power. We may have become wholly absorbed in some power
in our daily life, but this does not mean that we are to
go no further towards the realization of our real self.
No, if on the road along which we pursue our real self we
meet with some realities and powers not before suspected,
surely it is worth our while to take notice of them, to
understand them, and to use them for a good purpose.

Mystics know that a certain moral evolution is necessary
before a person can attain a certain power, so they do not
teach it indiscriminately; this is not out of a desire to
reserve a monopoly or to hold back something which they
possess, but what will a child do if you give it a loaded
rifle to play with? It does not understand what killing
means. Yes, if we stop to examine our aims, our aspirations,
the pursuits in life to which we attach such great importance,
perhaps we shall discover that we are not very far removed
from children. The world as a whole is not prepared or ready
to use spiritual powers. The sages and mystics ask of someone,
'Will he do real justice to the power if he has it?' This
explains why they select a few awakened souls and leave
the children to go on playing. They think it is a sin to
take little children from their play when they wish to continue
to play; why make them grave, serious, anxious, sorrowful?
Surely it is better for the present to give them more toys,
more of the occupations they are so engrossed in, more of
the sports they love so much.

In the East it is regarded as a sin to awaken a person
from his sleep. Let him rest; he is comfortable; it is not
yet time for him to wake up. So if one went and woke him
up one would make him unhappy and even resentful. Let him
go on sleeping till the time comes when he will wake up
naturally. A person is asleep when he says that there is
no such thing as telepathy, no such thing as heaven, no
such thing as God. Let such a one be; he is not ready.

So the mystics do not talk openly about mysticism but
keep their knowledge for the few who have awakened. And
when a person wakes up he will see for himself. The only
purpose which the sage or the mystic fulfills is to take
this person's hand when this happens, when he thinks 'It
is now his time to awaken; I must give him help.' This is
called initiation, and from that time a person is ready
to enter into the mysteries of life.

Should everyone learn mysticism? The only difficulty
in learning mysticism is man-made; it is not of God's making.
The higher life is so much simpler than life on the surface
of the earth, but man does not know what he is. He does
not know that he is a drop on the surface of the ocean,
and yet an ocean himself in his innermost part; that there
is nothing that is not within him. A person who says to
himself, 'I do not possess this faculty', 'I cannot put
up with this', 'I am sorry but I could not think of such
a thing', and so forth, well, all these ideas are his imagination,
part of the confusion of his thought and lack of understanding
of what he is. If a person understood what he is he would
never say, 'I cannot do this.' Instead he would become a
real man, that which a man ought to be. The mystic only
says, 'I cannot' or 'I have not' very seldom, and he believes
these words still less often. When God is with you everything
is with you; when God is in you everything is in you. Inspiration,
knowledge, light, all are then within you. But if you find
joy in confusion, if you confuse yourself and keep yourself
in darkness, you may do so. However, you have inherited
from the heavenly Father His inspiration, His Light, His
power. You have inherited might from the Almighty God; you
have inherited light from the Light of the universe. Therefore
you are blessed with all these things, if you can only open
your eyes and see the blessing.

What is the sign that one is ready to awaken from sleep?
It is when a person begins to think, 'All that I have learned
and understood seems so unreal; there are some realities
of which I am vaguely aware, and yet compared with them
all I have studied and done seems to be of no account.'
As the dawn comes after the night of darkness, so he sees
light appearing; but he has not yet seen the sun; he is
only beginning to awaken.

People think that life is simple: the things that seem
good to them they believe to be good; the things that seem
bad they just think are bad, and so on. But the time comes
when a person asks himself in a bewildered manner whether
these things are really good or bad, whether the ideals
of his people are really high or low. He is beginning to
see things in a different light; he sees joy in sorrow and
sorrow in joy, right in wrong and wrong in right, low in
the high and high in the low. And at this point he does
not know where to turn, so he has to speak to himself and
unlearn what he has learned all his life. He discovers that
there is a knowledge in the light of which everything appears
the opposite to its previous appearance. In fact everything
is different. It is like a person who admired a theatrical
performance and found how different everything was the next
morning. On awakening to the day, how different the view
of the world becomes!

Before the awakening, man with his little knowledge thinks
he knows so much, but now his pride is broken. He finds
that all he has known hitherto is useless, that he has to
begin all over again. But this is the very time when inspiration
and power come. The power of concentration is the means
by which to acquire not only the power of telepathy, but
will power, moral power, inspirational power, moral courage,
mental strength, physical strength, and all the different
kinds of development in life. It is the first stage, and
maybe it is the last stage, when a person's eyes open to
real light.

There are three different steps in concentration: observation,
concentration, and vision. Observation is developed by singleness
of glance. For instance, if I look at a person I can see
that one person much better than if I look at many people
and it is thus with everything in life. The first step in
learning mysticism is just this: to develop our observation.
We are always looking at a hundred things around us, and
hardly ever study one thing properly at all. To understand
and know a thing better we must keep looking at it; if we
keep looking at everything we look at nothing. Such is the
law of observation.

The next step, concentration, implies steadiness of mind.
We cannot concentrate until we have made the external part
steady. Just think: can we keep our eye fixed on one spot
for some time without moving it? Can we sit in one posture
without fidgeting? Why, many people cannot sit still even
for a photographer! This shows us that the vehicle given
us to control and utilize is not completely in our power,
and if the lowest vehicle we have is not in our power, though
this is the simplest thing to control, how then can our
mind be in our control? How can we acquire more pure and
more powerful thoughts?

Various postures have been recommended to enable us to
acquire control. The body has to be made our obedient servant
first, and when the body has been subdued the mind will
learn obedience from it, for order teaches order. The inner
self cannot be in order if the external self is not in order,
for our mind is always affected by the body. In order to
learn to control the mind we must therefore first learn
to control the body.

The third step is vision. When concentration has been
mastered the vision becomes clear, and when the vision is
clear we can aim clearly, like one who has learned to aim
a ball at a certain spot and hit it. If he does not throw
the ball properly how can it reach the goal? To hold the
ball in our hand and aim it at and hit the desired goal
we must master three things: observation, concentration,
and vision.